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Pagdiwata Festival: Date: December 8 Location: Puerto Princesa, Palawan

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Jamaica Millanes Rosell

The Pagdiwata Ritual Festival is an annual celebration held in December in Puerto Princesa, Palawan by the Tagbanua people. The festival involves rituals led by the Babaylan or high priest to acknowledge deities and seek healing for the sick. Participants offer foods, drinks, and perform dances. The celebration is an important part of Tagbanua culture and an opportunity to give thanks for successful harvests or hunts.

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Pagdiwata Festival: Date: December 8 Location: Puerto Princesa, Palawan

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Jamaica Millanes Rosell
3K views2 pages
The Pagdiwata Ritual Festival is an annual celebration held in December in Puerto Princesa, Palawan by the Tagbanua people. The festival involves rituals led by the Babaylan or high priest to acknowledge deities and seek healing for the sick. Participants offer foods, drinks, and perform dances. The celebration is an important part of Tagbanua culture and an opportunity to give thanks for successful harvests or hunts.

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Pagdiwata Festival

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The Pagdiwata Ritual Festival is an annual celebration held in December in Puerto Princesa, Palawan by the Tagbanua people. The festival involves rituals led by the Babaylan or high priest to acknowledge deities and seek healing for the sick. Participants offer foods, drinks, and perform dances. The celebration is an important part of Tagbanua culture and an opportunity to give thanks for successful harvests or hunts.

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Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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3K views2 pages

Pagdiwata Festival: Date: December 8 Location: Puerto Princesa, Palawan

Uploaded by

Jamaica Millanes Rosell
The Pagdiwata Ritual Festival is an annual celebration held in December in Puerto Princesa, Palawan by the Tagbanua people. The festival involves rituals led by the Babaylan or high priest to acknowledge deities and seek healing for the sick. Participants offer foods, drinks, and perform dances. The celebration is an important part of Tagbanua culture and an opportunity to give thanks for successful harvests or hunts.

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Pagdiwata Festival

Date: December 8
Location: Puerto Princesa, Palawan

Celebrated by the Tagbanua people of Palawan, the Pagdiwata Ritual Festival is an annual event of
acknowledgement and expression of Palawan people to the deities same time seeking for the deitiesí
help in healing the sick and in need and offer prayers for departed loved ones. People who are in
serious health conditions also come to join the event, treated by their family being the medium of
healing.

The town proper of Aborlan in Palawan is host to the Pagdiwata Tribal Ritual held every month of
December on a full moon. Aborlan is a small municipality that has the mountains and the Sulu Sea
surrounding it. It has about 19 barangays and a population of no more than 30,000 people. To get to
Aborlan to see the Pagdiwata Tribal Ritual which is about 75 kilometers away from Puerto
Princesa, one can either hop on a bus or ride a jeepney which departs from the capital city daily.
The ride should be about 2 hours. If one is booked at a hotel in Aborlan, transportation becomes
much easier because the hotel picks up its guests upon their arrival at the Puerto Princesa Airport.

The celebration of Pagdiwata is also an opportunity to celebrate bountiful harvest or succesful


hunting trip.
The Babaylan, or the high priest, lead the ritual, since he is considered the most powerful and
influential among the people of Tagbanua. They strongly believe that disrespecting the Babaylan
faces severe punishment by the supernaturals.
The festivity includes offering of wine, nuts, wax, food, and many others. Activities such as
planting, war/hunting dance, harvesting, tarek, in a nightlong singing and dancing of lively
traditional music, and the main feature, the pagsuldan, wherein the Babaylan gets possessed by the
spirtis. Observance of the ritual is Tagbanua’s family affair to which they express sentiments and is
important part of Palawan’s culture.

The Tagbanwa, located in north and central Palawan, is the dominant ethnic group in Palawan.
There are concentrations in Coron, Aborlan, and Puerto Princesa. The Tagbanwa performs the
Pagdiwata ritual to celebrate various occasions including bountiful harvests and weddings. The
ritual involves the drinking of rice wine from Chinese stoneware jars through bamboo straws. Like
some of the Mangyan, the Tagbanwa have created their own syllabic script based on an ancient
Hindic model.

As elsewhere, rice is a ritual food and a divine gift from which the ritual wine is fermented. The
Tagbanwa exploit forest resources including copal, rattan, and wax for income; they also craft iron
with the double-bellows forge. They are one of the few remaining peoples still using the blowgun.
Kinship is reckoned bilaterally, although there is a bias towards matriocality after marriage. Affinal
relations are tenuous, and “in-law avoidance” is practiced.

ref.: http://bestphilippineattractions.com/2011/12/02/best-philippine-festivals-pagdiwata-festival/

Look also here: www.Festivals.PhilippineCulture.ph and


www.AlternativeHealthCare.PhilippineCulture.ph

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